The ISP's won't have to. Someone will have to put all of the NSA's code through an evaluation -- otherwise, it won't get a one of the Trusted Computing Platform signatures. Microsoft has been through some level of Common Criteria Evaluation -- they might be able to swing a Trusted signature on their evaluated code. But SE Linux? Someone will have to put down the bucks to get it through an evaluation -- if it can pass.
Something that confuses many people: Secure != Trusted or vice versa. Trusted means full audit of every security relevent piece of information (you've heard of the need for a paper trail on voting? It's the same thing). W/o a detailed audit trail, there is no trust. Furthermore, there has to be validation that the code that is "validated" is the code that's running on the computer and that the code does what it says it will do.
This usually requires auditing of development practices to give some assurance against "backdoors". Even the tools used for development need to be validated to _some_ level -- as those tools could be written to introduce a back door in the object code that isn't present in the OS source code.
People are naive if they think just providing "security", on an OS or on an electronic ballot box, will qualify as "trustworthy".
Given sufficient motivation, resources and time, anything less than a full eval of source, development methodology, build tools and environment will allow for either computer or voter box fraud.
Given the current state of NSA wiretaps on US citizens, I think the case can be made that the NSA might develop a secure OS that shouldn't be taken, on face value, to be at all trustworthy.
I don't see this as a positive trend. There are certain "infrastructure" items provided in a society for the common good. Providing them at a fixed-cost allows considerably greater mobility and freedom for "users" without having to worry about "the small stuff".
How is charging per-minute usage fees on roads, or charging for length traveled, or "weight" on a road, different than charging per-minute internet access fees, distance or volume charges?
I don't think it would be economically viable to start charging highway usage by the mile. I don't know about every location, but in areas of high property value, those "servicing" the local residents (think teachers, nurses, et al. in addition to standard service type jobs) often cannot afford to live in the communities in which they work due to cost: they have to commute from outside the area because the area is too expensive. Charging per-mile type fees for drivers will hit those who have to commute to work. Those who can telecommute, or who are paid well enough to afford "local" housing will be least affected. It seems this just has the effect of increased separation between the haves (living near their job, or not needing to work), and those having to drive to work.
Again, so often there is the NotInMyBackYard syndrome -- usually more so from affluent or "quality-of-life"-special communities. In the SF Bay Area, mass transit was supposed to encircle the bay and taxes were levied many years ago to implement such, but snotty towns have put up roadblocks to having tracks through their cities or having rail-stops exit in their cities (we don't want commuting "riff-raff" exiting in our city -- or even rails going through it!...atherton.ca.us, et al).
You said:
"We will never build one [clean nuclear powered reactor] here because of all the green knee jerkers".
Perhaps this is also a bit of a self fulfilling reaction? It might be a matter of education about how "green" nuclear is compared to burning fossil fuels for electricity -- or how "green" nuclear power is compared to rolling "brownouts".
Just hire a new spin doctor, some good marketing and PR types, some lawyers. Just market fossil fuel as "dirty"/polluting/brown/black energy and have bright green-glowing nuclear power shown as the new green energy and how long would it take to change the mass's impressions?
Heck, we can bill going nuclear as patriotic too! That might still have some cachet as well. We better be sure we know what we are doing as we do this though...
So this boils down to Sony ignoring the access control (LGPL) in place on the LAME library and commits theft of someone else's Intelletual Property in order to construct their DRM code?
If this isn't the most blatent case of a pot calling a kettle black. They should be sued under the DMCA for each CD they have sold in the US market.
It would seem this is no longer a civil matter but a criminal matter. Will this be taken as a case by the FBI?
On a minute level, I agree with you. Alcohol causes many more problems than, say, consumption of water. However, while there is damage caused by the effects of 2nd-hand exposure to the behavior of alcohol users, there doesn't seem to be any measurable effect of 2nd hand exposure to alcohol.
Working in a 'bar', might be considered hazardous due to the types of behavior one might be expected to deal with, but that's what bouncers are for.
Bouncers can't stop smoke.
Is there a reason why tobacco can't be grown in your backyard without all the phosphate chemicals so one could enjoy "natural tobacco" cigarettes w/o all the additives? Would these be any healthier?
I was surprised to learn that the "4 o'clocks", or "Marvels of Peru" growing around my property (since before I lived here -- remarkably hardy) are in the Nicotinae family. They are categorized as "poisonous". Are they the same type of poison as the Nicotine in cigarettes? Would this mean that tobacco might grow as hardily? Dunno.
In any event -- tobacco seems to be uniquely suited for stinking up 2nd hand people and objects -- much better than incense or pot smoke. Having smelled people who have been to events where smoking was banned (but pot was smoked), I was told of the smoking or could see that so-and-so might have inhaled, but I couldn't smell it on them. Whereas multiple times, I've had friends just be in the vicinity of others who have smoked and they come home reeking of cigarette smoke. It gets on their clothes and doesn't come off until they wash them. And from input from other girlfriends who used to barhop, they caution not to put such items into the closet, as they will contaminate not only other clothes, but also the walls of the closet!
When my ex and I visited her mom's home, the home looked to be painted yellow on the inside. Her mom was a chain smoker (died of lung cancer in her early 60's). I was surprised when my ex showed me some pictures on the wall -- removing them from the wall -- the wall was white underneath! I'd never seen anything so bad.
I've had some alcohol around for maybe 20+ years (I'm not a real big drinker). It hasn't discolored anything yet.
So...I think there may be some problems with your analogy...
I almost posted something earlier (but the form timed out before I remembered to send it...sigh).
But one of the problems facing OpenOffice acceptance in Massachusetts is the fact that it doesn't have the use of the native Windows accessibility libraries that MS-Office does. Why not?
Uh...for the same reason this author claims his open source isn't fully accepted in the OpnSrc world --.not.invented.here/not.fully.open.src, from "gcc/gasm" to interpreter of choice.
Oh one hand I can "grok" this and grok the desire for a full "verified up from the assembly code" program where every step can be audited and verified. However, gcc doesn't produce as high quality code as the non-free Intel compiler (or so I've heard, I can't afford the Intel compiler...:-)). But it's quite noticeable in areas like the auto-scroll feature in Tbird/FireFox -- had to be implemented after the fact and not quite the same as the native, and notably slower on older machines. The libraries are more portable across platforms -- that's good, but at the cost of easy porting, comes the price of performance unique to specific OS's and platforms.
If one doesn't believe there are performance penalties in trying to implement GNU utils on alternate platforms, they can see a great example in the Gnu "find" command. Compare and contrast the performance of a Gnu implementation (such as Cygwin) 'find' for finding a simple filename to the native MS GUI 'find' interface (W/O the background indexing feature). The native interface is only about 10x+ faster. But hey, find.exe is 'fully open source'.
Are such trade off "always" desirable for the end user? I understand there are 'cons' to using MS libs...(like inherent bugs among others), but there are possible benefits too. It's hardly a black and white issue. *sigh*
I had a discussion with a housemate on the words atheism and agnosticism: The word, "atheism" comes from the Greek roots for "no/negation/away from" (the "a") and "deity, god or goddess" (the "the" as in "theos"). If one wanted to claim that one didn't know, the word "agnostic" would seem to be more correct.
In the word, "agnostic", we have the Greek prefix, "a" again ("no/negation/away from"), in front of "gnostic" or one who "gno"s (knows) -- Greek word for knowledge. An "agnostic" claims not to know, one way or another.
It didn't follow that belief in "no-god" was somehow "better" for an educated scientist than simply claiming "I don't know". Other that in this society, "I don't know, is given little weight". It seems much more "vogue" to assert the negative than admit "I don't know".
My housemate seemed to believe that "0", "black", "no" or "a" was the natural state of things, and thus didn't need to prove any belief structure which adopted the negative stance by default. I see that view as her belief system. In the same way I can't help but see "atheism" as "just another belief structure" that is equally proven correct as the other "faith based" belief systems.
It doesn't appear to be provably logical to believe in "atheism" anymore than some "theism". Instead, "agnosticism" seems more accurate description of what we seem to be able to "prove" (scientifically).
Is there a way of proving we don't exist in a matrix, ala Tibetan Buddhism and pop-adaptation of the movie of the same name (note prequel, "Tron"...et al;-) )? Just as an example. Seems to be lining up more with findings of physics of everything (all matter) being luminous creations of light against a tapestry of black. I don't see those types of view as excluding evolution or "intelligent design". Maybe it depends on what one defines as "intelligence"? Does an amoeba have "intelligence" in a drive to reproduce and live? One can find one is disagreeing in the minutia of word semantics.
They seem to be saying that the unwanted habits are the result of physical structures that have been "built" into the brain at some point.
How does this differer from other ways of altering the brain, say engaging in a "vice" or something that was considered "innocuous" at the time, but in a different situation, turns out to be "harmful"? If the unwanted behavior patterns are caused by biology, (Downs Syndrome), or by physical problems (tumors, brain lesions, strokes, blows to the head), or by exposure to some excessive shock (as in those that cause post-traumatic shock/stress syndrome), or purposeful shocks (electric shock-to-brain treatments), or 1st/2nd hand exposure to smoke/alcohol/drugs (as an adult or a fetus).
Doesn't education also physically change the structures in the same way -- and "miseducation" could also change the brain to have a child raised to have values that current society finds unpalatable (or at the very least, debatable).
This raises a question about the nature of our entire "legal" and "justice" system -- the idea about not holding people liable for crimes committed before a law was written -- what about an entire group of people who may have been "misprogrammed" by misguided or under-education or though no one caring - neglect -- should our laws be written to hold them responsible when the underlying cause of their behavior has its roots in the core of their brain and is may be very resistant to reprogramming. Drop an ancient Greek philosopher onto the American anti-pedophile landscape and explain to them that what they consider to be normal is now a criminal behavior.
In the same vein, matters criminal in one society (smoking pot, prostitution) or banned (gay marriage) may be legal in other less violent societies (Netherlands, Denmark? et al?).
How does our the US "moral" system of criminalizing violence, but allowing easy promotional access to incite or "train" in such behavior (violence on TV, Movies, computer games) to both youth and adults, compare and contrast with our laws around the perfectly legal, pleasurable, and necessary-for-life, activity of sex and access to materials (P0Rn, accessories, birth control), freedom to decide on nature of relationships (government legitimizes only the single, "[A|E]H[O][A]H"-type relationship, 1M+1W) which has made various types of sexual behavior, aside from the "1-approved-type", illegal at various times and in various ways (laws against sodomy, prostitution, adultery, "unnatural acts" (any sex not resulting in procreation), etc.)?
The laws controlling method and means to an essential, necessary - for - life - on - this - planet, legal activity of sex are almost entirely based on whims of the dominant religion-based "morals" of that society -- which change from generation to generation. Compare the standard set in the movie, "The Graduate", to the real life story turned upside down of 22yo, recent, female college grad, going to prison for what might appear to be the sexual advances of a student and her not trying to cause him problems as he was transferring out of the school. As the article mentions, the "age of consent" ranges from age 12 in Holland, to 16-18 in the US. In Wisconsin, they have a special state law applying to teachers and therapists that raise the penalties for "supposed" offenders to that of a felony instead of it being a misdemeanor. She was sentenced with the judges admonition of "'you're going to need to look deep into your soul' to change 'your character flaw.'" She was appealing.
Regardless, if it is constitutionally unethical to enact laws that apply in a matter that it would be judged harmful to an accused, how should laws be ethically applied to an entire generation of people that have been raised under one system, who later find their previous behavior "criminalized".
It is very hard for most to sympathize or understand this in what is may often be the majority mindset: that is
Not that I am disagreeing with you, but I'd like to read more.
I can self-create "facts" to support your view, though that makes it no more valid, please post any peer-reviewed medical references.
Playing devil's advocate for a bit I'll argue the converse:
I found my getting sick to be more a function of how many other people I was around. If I worked from home alot (controlled temperature except for daily trips out to yoga where I'd regularly get cold, but be fairly isolated), I'd tend to stay well, but if I went in to work (another regulated atmosphere) and was around other people, or around shopping malls or crowded indoor events, I was more likely to pick up something. I had a noticable uptick in minor infections when my partner became a primary grade school teacher. Didn't get it quiet as often as she, or if I did, it was often a lower grade varient, but occasionally, a particularly virulent flu was going around and would cause some pain -- and oddly, in a few cases, even though we'd both had it once, there were one or two times we seemed to relapse off of each other.
I often feel cold -- especially in yoga classes but even in my own home, nevertheless, I rarely get sick unless I have housemates who bring things home from schoolmates/workmates. Doesn't seem to be temperature related though as even though I'll often find myself in 'cold environs' (like yoga class where, people like windows open even when in 40's outside and class room temps of upper 60's are not uncommon) -- but I am spaced fairly far apart from others. But I do get to the point of shivering/feeling chilled, one of the first stages of hypothermia. If your hypothesis was correct, I should contract bacterial infections more often, but I don't seem to -- I seem to suffer less of them by virtue of not being around virus infected people.
At this point, I'm not inclined to believe your assertion w/o further evidence and a listing of sources that I can read. It is a great hypothesis though!:-) Linda
Um...how about management, the rating's system, the reward system? The Choose2_Fun(features,time-to-market,quality) => [usually](features,time-to-market)? Or how about, the "we get paid for support and bug fixes but not for perfect products, non-customer reported bug-fixes are against the company's financial best interests"? (That one sucks -- as soon as "support and bug fixing became a profit center for most companies, there became an incentive to release badly documented, confusingly designed and malfunctioning programs.)
How about the lovely project design where one designs a schedule to fix all High & Medium bugs (at minimum) to be fixed, some features, then allows some nearly equal amount of time for documentation and testing and further bug fixing. There was a time that time in testing was thought "should" be nearly the same (maybe 3:2 ratio) as time in development) -- need to allow for time to fix bugs from testing and do full retest of products..... but then, the schedule is shot to hell, by outsiders/latecomers/marketing about this and that and the other thing "needing to be in this release" and the time being dropped out of testing and documentation? If you say "no", you get viewed as unpopular to outside groups, but respected by peer groups and subordinates who don't get pulled in for regular all-nighters and weekend work-a-thons, but conversely the opposite can happen. It only gets worse if one doesn't or can't allow those involved in such a mess time-off or a big bonus (what, a bonus? for doing their job?! You gotta be kidding!)
Hold the companies to blame, maybe, but individual programmers? The individuals are usually pawns manipulated in a much larger political organization that rewards specific behaviors and punishes others. Until the reward/punishment system is changed within the company, it's simply farcical to hold individual contributors responsible for bugs. As for "free software" or "independent" developers -- they are up against the same unethical pressures as their corporate siblings.
The reason why overseas outsourcing has become so popular is that there are no "personalities" or "people" involved. Right now, it's so cheap to outsource that it's looked at as a commodity product, and people just don't care that much about quality. So it's the ideal solution for many of today's corporations.
They can eventually export "blame" and scapegoat anonymous overseas entities who likely won't have legal recourse to fight back against slander or liable (not that many individual employees do). Unfortunately, even in America one can find one's self scapegoated for a companies illegal and/or unethical behavior and find one's self with little or no recourse.
Anyone know if HD-DVD will only be usable with an online connection? That was a major downer for me when I heard that was to be an included requirement in all Blue-Ray players. So much for watching DVD's on a portable player somewhere (airplanes, in the park, in the car...wherever...).
It's bad enough they don't let you backup the media and make the media extremely delicate/prone to damage (not to mention the "manufacturing defective DVD's, that just delaminate and die over time), but now they will tell you where you are allowed to watch it -- must be connected, somehow, somewhere, on the global internet...and Blue-Ray users will have their viewing preferences "validated" (stored and recorded) each time they play.
Do you really want someone to have a log of every movie you watch, everytime you play it?...as that seems to be the Blu-Ray solution to copy protection and detection of player tampering.
Just haven't heard how Draconian HD-DVD will be about this.
FYI, I _was_ a supporter of Blue-Ray (higher capacity = more good; the XXX industry was said to prefer the higher capacity format so they could include more "angles"...*yip*...not that they ever make anything that seems to appeal to my tastes, but that's not the point!). When I found about the online verification nonsense...BluRay became "Evil-blue-ray-of-death" in my mind....not that I see things in black and blue or anything. (!?non-seq!).
To the poor brainwashed American who has been successfully victimized by Partnership for a Think-free America", who believes that marijuana is "dangerous".
First, look at the numbers: cigarettes, alcohol, and -- here's a big _fat_ problem: diet are top of the list killers in the US. Top spot is still heart disease traced to bad diet, over-eating, fat-foods and tobacco use. Cancer I think is around number #2, with over 18 deaths per hour - 24 hours a day 7 days a week -- over 400,000 people a year. Alcohol deaths have dropped due to _training_ -- has alcohol gotten less dangerous? No. There has been alot more spent on education.
Now come up with any study that shows # of accidents caused by someone being "high". Last I heard the CDC had the deaths directly attributed to marijuana as -0-. Sure, the alcohol and pharmaceutical companies among other corporate lobbies (cotton, wood based paper, etc) have a strong vested interest in trying to make you believe marijuana "kills", but the stats they use test for metabolites in someone's body that stay around up to 30 days after use -- way longer than the effect.
Second, as for actual effects on driving -- two studies that were buried found no driving degradation for moderate use in those who smoked regularly -- in fact of the two studies (one Oregon or Washington DMV), the other the CA CHP, the CHP study shows that smoking actually *improved* driving habits for _some_ drivers -- they were less rushed about getting places -- less tense, less prone to "road rage" and less prone to aggressive driving -- something now said to be an increasing cause of accidents. So get the facts before you talk about how dangerous it is and don't be fooled by the "Partnership for a Think-Free America: Just Say No to everything". I don't know about their current funding, but in their early years almost 2/3rds of their funding came from the pharma and alcohol industry. You wanna talk dangerous? Approximately 1/3rd of the pharma's patent portfolio would become virtually useless if people could grow their own at home. Heck -- it even inhibits cancer growth, which might explain why you don't see a Surgeon General's warning on marijuana smoking. To the contrary -- those who smoked cigarettes lowered their risk of lung cancer by smoking pot, they believe because the THC opens up the airways and allows the cancer particle to more quickly exit the lungs.
As for the alcohol lobby's interest in keeping marijuana illegal? It's a competitor drug. Usage patterns of alcohol showed drops in sales when large shipments were verified as coming into an area. Alcohol kills alot more people than marijuana so you might want to rethink that "dangerous" thing. Alcohol also seems to let out the asshole in people far more freely with violence not being uncommon. The opposite effect seems more common with cannabis ingestion.
There are many pharma drugs that just are not as good at treating various ailments as marijuana, or doing so without worse side effects.
Heck -- Henry Ford designed his first car to run on biodiesel & ethanol. He was growing pot on his estate and was believed to be doing so to develop a cheap, environmentally friendly fuel for his new car. Unfortunately, oil reserves were discovered first, and it was cheaper to extract the already "energy" rich "earth-battery reserves" to power Ford's invention.
A similar threat to Hearst's Publication empire came when an over abundance of hemp threatened the value of his large holdings of forest land as hemp can product about 4 times the paper/acre of tree, and can do so every year. It doesn't require lots of pesticides or fertilizers to grow -- it's a weed! Furthermore, you can skip a Very Dangerous step in making paper from hemp. Tree fibers are too stiff and long to be used in paper. They need to be broken down -- the only chemicals for the job are chlorine based products that produce toxic dioxins as byproducts. Those byproducts are costly to process as dioxin doesn't nat
Could either you or your followup friend "op12" explain what you mean by slush brown or slush anything?
Possible differences in my assumptions you are making about people's (or at least my standard config). I read slashdot for information. Being a visually oriented person, I find extraneous graphics and colors, while pleasant, often interfere with with the specific task of getting the actual information I want as quickly as I want. So I normally run in low-graphics mode and have my standard browswer return a browser ID of of some version of "lynx" (for the _rare site that recognizes text mode browswers).
Pictures on websites are only of occasional benefit because they are shot for monitors that seem to average ~19" and 1024x768 in the mainstream, which calcs out to 67 DPI, which falls below the lowest standard res for Windows settings. If they have a 17" monitor, 17" monitor, they are at least up to a low-res windows setting of 75 DPI, but unless you are someone who has a job in the computer industry or a computer enthusiast (like maybe an average slashdot reader), Dell tells me that their largest monitor sales are in the 1024x768 size. Even games have preferred that size as frame rates in the past have traditionally been lower at higher resolutions though that is slowing changing as graphics cpu's get faster -- yet still, no matter how fast the graphics get on a 1600x1200 or 1920x1200 monitor running at 24-32 bit color, it always seems that such games will run faster, and have smoother graphics running in a 1024x768 mode. I almost never see modern games runnning at 640x480 res, and 8-bit color went out in the early 90's I think. However, some less advanced modern games that focus on story lines or other tech [BIOTECH] (www.wilddivine.com) rather than action and frame rate still default to 800x600 color in 16-bit (maybe 24-32) bit color. But the end result is that web designers still design for the middle of the curve 70-75 DPI user.
Only a few years ago, on a 133DPI Dell laptop, I switched between using X' scaleable DPI settings (but a few programs used or expected fixed- sized fonts), to Windows, where I tried to use exact DPI settings (Custom), and the "standardized "Large" size (125 DPI setting), but Windows programmers were just plain dumb from the start, with 99% sizing widgets pictures and text based on pixel sizes, not querying the output device and sizing widgets, text and pictures appropriately. On Dell's newer 1920x1200 laptops, they averaged about 144 DPI. That's almost twice the clueless (or lazy) designer expected, 65-72 DPI. Thumbnails become "pinky nails", 10pt text becomes 5pt text, pictures are reduced to 50% normal size with details being visible with a magnifying glass, or being jaggedly blown-up with zoom features. Microsoft enhanced the "ease of abuse" of end users by conveniently ignoring pitiful user reqeusts to the IE browser to increase/decrease text size on many (most or all) CSS control web-sites.
While I still use IE for some purposes -- simply because it is faster to start, uses considerably less memory, and scrolls in real-time and scrolls smoothly, (vs. fire fox, which "stores" up scroll requests, and even with "smooth scrolling", scrolls so jerkily that that it is impossible to read scrolling text; and then due to stored scroll keys, goes past the point you wanted to scroll to due it's fundamental inability to use platform native scrolling capabilities). However, I use FireFox when I want a page to display Properly and not have text plotting all over itself (or being cut off) in unreadable ways.
Only website I return the browser name of Internet Explorer, is on Microsoft Sites, as various parts of their site (as of last check) still produce corrupt HTML if the Browser-user-agent string contains "Opera", that corrupts corrupt output on IE displays. It should be illegal to actively generate corrupt/buggy output designed to cause harm to a user's computer display based on
There's already a precedent on the books for states controlling minor's access to content deemed "harmful": access to viewing of human bodies possibly engaged in legal sexual acts.
Now here is a case of a government wanting to restrict a minor's access to entertainment and training video's promoting violence and murder -- things that are not only illegal, but growing problems in our socieity.
Hello...does the word "bassackwards" mean anything? What screwy with this situation? The United States has its priorities way screwed up in this area.
It was well noted around the world some of the differences in "3rd" world areas swamped by the Tsunami last summer and area's of a "1st" world swamped by Katrina. There were numerous reports of rape, looting, even of looters shooting down rescue helicopters in New Orleans. Amerika really showed it's colors in how the opportunists responded and how slow the rescue efforts were in helping a less affluent portion of the US (but considerably more so than the Tsunami victim area).
How can we sit around having laws that rate PG rate artful movies like "Sirens" as "R" for nudity, or "Ma vien la Rose" "R" for harmful thought matter (story of a boy who thinks he's a girl) -- things that are thought provoking but by no means illegal, when at the same time, we can allow thousands of TV-Shows and movies to run with multiple murders and varying levels of graphic details of violence to run with a PG or PG-13 rating?
It's just plain insane. The same ratings should be _able_ to be applied to video games -- just as there are laws on the books applying to restricted access to "adult" book and magazine content (where adult means things you can legally do as an adult). But for things you "can't" legally do as an adult, somehow we think that it's fine for those to be unrestricted?
Step aside from your feelings of your personal "rights" being trodden on for just one second and try to look at it from a societal view. Where is the logic in the US's current attitudes towards sex and violence?
Compare and contrast to contries with similar attitudes towards sex and violence (heavily reglious societies...Iran, Iraq, etc.) vs. much of Europe. Check out the violent crime, the gun-assisted crime rate, and the rate of sexual crimes against women and children -- especially in countries like the Netherlands.
Added cost of policing or added cost of lost sales to minors?
Makes e-commerce sites look better? Sure...try to put down cash on an ecommerce site and see how far that gets ya.
I kid may have a debit card, but there will be a paper trail when "presumably", the parents get the statement. This makes purchasing such games anonymously more difficult.
As for the upper age teens making money. That's part of the game -- the younger kids still have to pay higher prices and by standard laws of supply and demand, that tends to reduce demand. It's one thing for a teen to make purchase a keg and liquor for an occasional party, but it might start to look a bit odd if they come in and purchase multiple copies of every new *restricted* video game. Might raise some eyebrows -- might remove some of the couriers.
It's not about a comprehensive be-all end-all to the problem just like some people whine about security solutions being flawed if they are not "the magic bullet". It is about raising the cost of the obtaining the product (a successful hack) to a specific [ab]user group. You and I both know it won't stop it, but if cigarettes and alcohol were for sale to 5-year olds, you don't think that would make 1 bit of difference in usage patterns?
Kennsington developed 11 button wireless trackball mice with a scroll wheel that would self-detect when it's battery ran low. Trouble is, it detects a low battery condition with annoying frequency if you use rechargeables (really doesn't like the.3 volt difference -- intelligent design that was; why not require 3 batteries if one needs the voltage to be that high, naw, that'd be too much like "right")...but when running on low voltage, they send random button presses -- mostly the extra 6 user-defined function keys at the top -- which were really cool when I first got the mice and had them to launch mail web browsers or specific apps, but once I got wise to the low voltage problem making them go off randomly/frequently, just changed all the launchables to 'noops'; the main buttons don't seem to misfire as much or don't go bad until the battery really gets low, so that's at least usable. I also have 2 of them on my desktop at any one time, so if one just ups and dies in the middle of a move, I can complete it with the other mouse -- they are on the same frequency and just can't be used simultaneously, but I can mouse with either hand -- which ever is more convenient. It was a first step toward easing off stress on my right hand's repetitive stress.
But I still get those dang annoying popups on a semi-frequent basis telling me that a brand new low-voltage battery has been detected in my mouse. Gee, thanks for sharing...
Well...Maybe I'm not the average slashdotter, but somehow I don't fancy the idea of having random appliances, in my house, hooked up to the internet. So very much so that I have 2 VCR's I bought ~ 2 years ago that I never got to work because they had no proxy support and I've never gotten around to setting up my gnux box as a transparent proxy for the VCR's website -- no manual override to setup channels or time. Very well designed to be useless w/o a ree & open internet connection (not an unroutable local subnet that only has internet access through a gnux proxy box).
Anyway, needing open access while on my internal subnet: at odds with local security policy so still not done. DVD player on internet? Badness. Like I want to tell someone everytime I watch some movie and give them the chance to revoke a movie everytime I play it -- yeah, right.
Did anyone read the temperature they exposed the damaged eyes to? 39.58C or 103.244F for 30 minutes x 6 sessions.
There are MANY more incidents of high heat exposure that people should be worried about. If my eye temperature (~94-95F at surface) was "suddenly" nearly 10F warmer, I think I might notice it as *pain*...ow!
Think about the desert heat that many people live (and fight wars) in. Temperatures there are easily over 110F -- have heard of temperatures around 120 not being uncommon.
What about people working near blast furnaces, metal or glass making, etc? How about sitting in front of a fireplace or camp fire and staring into the fire? It gets uncomfortable if the heat is hot enough -- you _notice_ it. That type of heat isn't going to happen in your eye without you being aware of it.
It's been a known fact of science that heat "cooks" protein and that the human body doesn't function well with sustained internal temperatures at 103 and higher. Raise it by 1.67C above that and you risk permanent brain damage as well, or raise a body "fever to 2C above their test temperature -- it's frequently fatal.
I have always worked around this in IE by pressing control-N to re-open the window in a normal browser window that shows me the address.
I'm not sure if there is another workaround for the Firefox related browsers, but a control-N only opens a blank window -- I can do that by reclicking on the IE-icon, or typing a web-addr into the "Address-bar" on Windows. It'd be much more useful if it opened a new window with duplicate context. I'm always using that feature when using Google. I have Google set to open results in a 2nd window. Often, I want to keep one or more result windows open -- and Google re-uses the original 2nd window it popped open. Pressing control-N, gives a dup of the result, freeing the "2nd window for re-use by Google. Another use -- sometimes a site opens a 2nd window of a fixed size. Unfortunately site designers haven't gotten the concept of "DPI". Even though the text is enlarged because the OS recognizes the DPI setting, the sites don't resize windows, widgets, frames, etc. Thus text gets cut off or is unreadable. Easy workaround -- just re-open the window and resize it.
Firefox and related don't seem to have this ability. I consider it a security risk as well as it being usability unfriendly to those using higher DPI screens. Is there a workaround for Firefox and related browsers?
If there isn't a workaround for Firefox/Moz/Safari/Netscape, I'd say that was a valid security complaint. It's even worse that this security risk is "old news". So much for fast security fixes w/open source.
My VHS player is about 15 years old, it still works fine. Two different DVD players (one 6 and one 5 years old have problems playing most disks. My parents bought a new DVD player last summer, but after failing to be able to watch 3 rentals, they've gone back to VHS tapes.
Nothing gets a rise out of my BP than trying to play DVD's. Some just won't play at all on either of 2 players -- it seems I can get them to work on a brand new DVD drive (2 older ones at about 3-4 years old failed). Too much dust in air, too much heat -- my VHS player isn't so picky. While I can get 5.1 sound out of the digital out my computer with the external USB DVD, due to the grand and glorious DVD-play & backup prevention technology, images on the computer's Video out don't display the DVD image! I see the DVD player frame and my desktop on the TV, but no image in the frame (while it is shown on the small screen of my computer -- it doesn't do much for a shared watching experience. It seems the Plextor-included SW player isn't seem compatible with the Dell video output.
These problems just don't happen w/the VCR. I had a newer S-VHS player from Sony, but it just stopped playing. Fortunately, the older tech VCR just keeps on working. Same w/my parent's VCR -- though their house is hardly dusty nor should it be too hot, but what is "too hot"? People are used to placing their players on top of their TV-sets, but that can certainly reach 80-90 degrees, which seems to be too hot.
I can see how my DVD's might be dusty...I have four dogs and a cat. I use a fireplace for heating in winter, and forced air (air intake from fireplace/living room in winter, into central air circulator, and gas forced air heating in spring/fall when it's too warm for fires). Still forced air blows around air, even with a 3M-Ultra-allergen filtrete, it's still above safe levels for a DVD player apparently.
However, my parents couldn't play DVD's reliably on a brand new player. They are in their 70-80's, and wouldn't be comfortable going through the gyrations I go through to get things to play. On a DVD, a blemish makes my Sony player jump chapters -- sometimes more than one, forward or back. On a VHS tape, it just affects a few seconds. Even CD's are more reliable in that way -- maybe a skipped track, but not 10-20 minutes of the movie just skipped.
It's *Great* video and audio quality (have 5.1 and DTS decoding and speaker setup) _when_ it works, but I dread renting and buying DVD's that I don't know will play when I get them home...
VHS's are disappointing in video quality...BUT...they do, just work...
Seems like one of the next, well, what am I talking about, it's a problem today: how to get the data to the multiple cores & threads? Right now it's a notable performance hit to "have" to go out to "main-memory", let alone wait for a disk read (might as well run that CPU at 800MHz or less).
Unless they are already planning on many more Gb of on-chip cache, data-starvation will become an even bigger issue than it is today.
It might be less of a problem for multiple-threads that are executing in the same program, but they are still likely to be operating on different data streams.
In the case of multiple cores running different programs it will get much worse, unless average program sizes shrink to a 1-2Mb of Resident/Working-Set size. Right now, looking at 2 Desktop systems:
Numbers are number of processes RES = Working Set/Resident Size, #processes>="X"MB VMSIZE = #proceses >= "X"MB ______________VMSIZE__RES --OS--___Total_ 10M __4M__8M__16M__32M WinXP____24____ 22 ___15___8___6____2 KDE-lnx__80____ 23 ___21__14___3____1 **
This would seem to indicate a need for 4-16Mb of L2 cache needed to keep all these processes from forcing L2-cache misses at 100's to 1000's of context switches/second. These are desktop systems that are not doing much other than email and web browsing. I cannot see it being better with high-load server systems. How many of the new multi-core systems are going to have
L2 cache > 8Mb/core? 4Mb/core (for fast cache/low-latency memory)? How many systems will fast enough main memory feed 8-32 processes.
I've read that CPU starvation is already a problem in the faster Intel family processors, will the "system" hardware infrastructure be there to enable multiple cores to be fed?
They may be lowering the GHz/cpu, but as the Sun article points out, with 8 cores,
that's still 8-cores times "N"GHz to be kept fed with data.
It's going to be a strained design scenario if you need to constrain those 8 cores to a using an average of 1Gb/core of cache memory.
Does anyone know if the new "breed" of multi-core CPU's have a shared cache or if they are going to be limited to separate caches/core? Could cache memory contention become an issue?
BTW -- does anyone know if disk manufacturers are planning (or are switching to common use) of multiple heads/platter? I could see arrays of 2-4 heads to
cut seek latency by 50-75% and disks with heads 90 or 180 degrees out of phase to reduce rotational latency -- perhaps allowing lower RPM disks to consume less power and run with lower noise/cooling requirements. Maybe this is
already being done in higher end SCSI disks?
**-why doesn't "ecode" support spacing? How does one do tables? What are
"too many "lame" characters (when I had better table w/more spacing)? Grumble -- took 3x as long to format as write! >;-((
Why don't you talk it over with your fiance and find a set of matching rings that you both can afford -- then spend excess cash on a honey-moon or house downpayment.
Do you want an equal partnership or are you looking to 'buy' a wife? Might I suggest that 'buy'ing such a wife sets a poor precedent for the future of the relationship.
If one of you doesn't make as much as the other, fine: figure out a proportional payment based on your take-home and find a pair based on that sum.
Wasting so much money on a rock in this day and age when marriages are often not "forever" seems a bit dated -- and being a woman, I certainly wouldn't want the feeling of indebtedness that might come from such an unequal exchange. It would feel like a wrong power & relationship dynamic.
You also might find she likes other gemstones better than the "vanilla" standard white diamond.
I don't think artificial diamonds of superb color/clarity are quite yet ready for "prime time". Have read they have made small ones, but they are quite a bit away from larger ones and mass production.
Might also think of whether or not you want the bride's father to pay for the wedding (another tradition, taking the place of the dowry), or maybe pool resources w/your parents toward a honeymoon (or house downpayment).
At least with the money for a house downpayment -- you will both own a house together. Studies have shown a positive correlation between, both joint ownership of property and joint finances and longer marriages.
All this presumes you are a "mere", mortal man. If you are Bill Gates or some multi-billionaire, well... nevermind.:-)
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The ISP's won't have to. Someone will have to put all of the NSA's code through an evaluation -- otherwise, it won't get a one of the Trusted Computing Platform signatures. Microsoft has been through some level of Common Criteria Evaluation -- they might be able to swing a Trusted signature on their evaluated code. But SE Linux? Someone will have to put down the bucks to get it through an evaluation -- if it can pass.
Something that confuses many people: Secure != Trusted or vice versa. Trusted means full audit of every security relevent piece of information (you've heard of the need for a paper trail on voting? It's the same thing). W/o a detailed audit trail, there is no trust. Furthermore, there has to be validation that the code that is "validated" is the code that's running on the computer and that the code does what it says it will do.
This usually requires auditing of development practices to give some assurance against "backdoors". Even the tools used for development need to be validated to _some_ level -- as those tools could be written to introduce a back door in the object code that isn't present in the OS source code.
People are naive if they think just providing "security", on an OS or on an electronic ballot box, will qualify as "trustworthy".
Given sufficient motivation, resources and time, anything less than a full eval of source, development methodology, build tools and environment will allow for either computer or voter box fraud.
Given the current state of NSA wiretaps on US citizens, I think the case can be made that the NSA might develop a secure OS that shouldn't be taken, on face value, to be at all trustworthy.
-l.
Spin doctoring words are meaningless. Lets see what actions follow.
-l
I don't see this as a positive trend. There are certain "infrastructure" items provided in a society for the common good. Providing them at a fixed-cost allows considerably greater mobility and freedom for "users" without having to worry about "the small stuff".
How is charging per-minute usage fees on roads, or charging for length traveled, or "weight" on a road, different than charging per-minute internet access fees, distance or volume charges?
I don't think it would be economically viable to start charging highway usage by the mile. I don't know about every location, but in areas of high property value, those "servicing" the local residents (think teachers, nurses, et al. in addition to standard service type jobs) often cannot afford to live in the communities in which they work due to cost: they have to commute from outside the area because the area is too expensive. Charging per-mile type fees for drivers will hit those who have to commute to work. Those who can telecommute, or who are paid well enough to afford "local" housing will be least affected. It seems this just has the effect of increased separation between the haves (living near their job, or not needing to work), and those having to drive to work.
Again, so often there is the NotInMyBackYard syndrome -- usually more so from affluent or "quality-of-life"-special communities. In the SF Bay Area, mass transit was supposed to encircle the bay and taxes were levied many years ago to implement such, but snotty towns have put up roadblocks to having tracks through their cities or having rail-stops exit in their cities (we don't want commuting "riff-raff" exiting in our city -- or even rails going through it!...atherton.ca.us, et al).
You said:
"We will never build one [clean nuclear powered reactor] here because of all the green knee jerkers".
Perhaps this is also a bit of a self fulfilling reaction? It might be a matter of education about how "green" nuclear is compared to burning fossil fuels for electricity -- or how "green" nuclear power is compared to rolling "brownouts".
Just hire a new spin doctor, some good marketing and PR types, some lawyers. Just market fossil fuel as "dirty"/polluting/brown/black energy and have bright green-glowing nuclear power shown as the new green energy and how long would it take to change the mass's impressions?
Heck, we can bill going nuclear as patriotic too! That might still have some cachet as well. We better be sure we know what we are doing as we do this though...
-lpq
I think there are laws against being a 'fence' for stolen goods.
Sony might need to prove due diligence was exercised in assuring the rootkit, er, code it purchased wasn't using stolen code.
-l
So this boils down to Sony ignoring the access control (LGPL) in place on the LAME library and commits theft of someone else's Intelletual Property in order to construct their DRM code?
If this isn't the most blatent case of a pot calling a kettle black. They should be sued under the DMCA for each CD they have sold in the US market.
It would seem this is no longer a civil matter but a criminal matter. Will this be taken as a case by the FBI?
-l
On a minute level, I agree with you. Alcohol causes many more problems than, say, consumption of water. However, while there is damage caused by the effects of 2nd-hand exposure to the behavior of alcohol users, there doesn't seem to be any measurable effect of 2nd hand exposure to alcohol.
Working in a 'bar', might be considered hazardous due to the types of behavior one might be expected to deal with, but that's what bouncers are for.
Bouncers can't stop smoke.
Is there a reason why tobacco can't be grown in your backyard without all the phosphate chemicals so one could enjoy "natural tobacco" cigarettes w/o all the additives? Would these be any healthier?
I was surprised to learn that the "4 o'clocks", or "Marvels of Peru" growing around my property (since before I lived here -- remarkably hardy) are in the Nicotinae family. They are categorized as "poisonous". Are they the same type of poison as the Nicotine in cigarettes? Would this mean that tobacco might grow as hardily? Dunno.
In any event -- tobacco seems to be uniquely suited for stinking up 2nd hand people and objects -- much better than incense or pot smoke. Having smelled people who have been to events where smoking was banned (but pot was smoked), I was told of the smoking or could see that so-and-so might have inhaled, but I couldn't smell it on them. Whereas multiple times, I've had friends just be in the vicinity of others who have smoked and they come home reeking of cigarette smoke. It gets on their clothes and doesn't come off until they wash them. And from input from other girlfriends who used to barhop, they caution not to put such items into the closet, as they will contaminate not only other clothes, but also the walls of the closet!
When my ex and I visited her mom's home, the home looked to be painted yellow on the inside. Her mom was a chain smoker (died of lung cancer in her early 60's). I was surprised when my ex showed me some pictures on the wall -- removing them from the wall -- the wall was white underneath! I'd never seen anything so bad.
I've had some alcohol around for maybe 20+ years (I'm not a real big drinker). It hasn't discolored anything yet.
So...I think there may be some problems with your analogy...
-l
I almost posted something earlier (but the form timed out before I remembered to send it...sigh).
.not.invented.here/not.fully.open.src, from "gcc/gasm" to interpreter of choice.
But one of the problems facing OpenOffice acceptance in Massachusetts is the fact that it doesn't have the use of the native Windows accessibility libraries that MS-Office does. Why not?
Uh...for the same reason this author claims his open source isn't fully accepted in the OpnSrc world --
Oh one hand I can "grok" this and grok the desire for a full "verified up from the assembly code" program where every step can be audited and verified. However, gcc doesn't produce as high quality code as the non-free Intel compiler (or so I've heard, I can't afford the Intel compiler...:-)). But it's quite noticeable in areas like the auto-scroll feature in Tbird/FireFox -- had to be implemented after the fact and not quite the same as the native, and notably slower on older machines. The libraries are more portable across platforms -- that's good, but at the cost of easy porting, comes the price of performance unique to specific OS's and platforms.
If one doesn't believe there are performance penalties in trying to implement GNU utils on alternate platforms, they can see a great example in the Gnu "find" command. Compare and contrast the performance of a Gnu implementation (such as Cygwin) 'find' for finding a simple filename to the native MS GUI 'find' interface (W/O the background indexing feature). The native interface is only about 10x+ faster. But hey, find.exe is 'fully open source'.
Are such trade off "always" desirable for the end user? I understand there are 'cons' to using MS libs...(like inherent bugs among others), but there are possible benefits too. It's hardly a black and white issue. *sigh*
-l
I had a discussion with a housemate on the words atheism and agnosticism: The word, "atheism" comes from the Greek roots for "no/negation/away from" (the "a") and "deity, god or goddess" (the "the" as in "theos"). If one wanted to claim that one didn't know, the word "agnostic" would seem to be more correct.
;-) )? Just as an example. Seems to be lining up more with findings of physics of everything (all matter) being luminous creations of light against a tapestry of black. I don't see those types of view as excluding evolution or "intelligent design". Maybe it depends on what one defines as "intelligence"? Does an amoeba have "intelligence" in a drive to reproduce and live? One can find one is disagreeing in the minutia of word semantics.
In the word, "agnostic", we have the Greek prefix, "a" again ("no/negation/away from"), in front of "gnostic" or one who "gno"s (knows) -- Greek word for knowledge. An "agnostic" claims not to know, one way or another.
It didn't follow that belief in "no-god" was somehow "better" for an educated scientist than simply claiming "I don't know". Other that in this society, "I don't know, is given little weight". It seems much more "vogue" to assert
the negative than admit "I don't know".
My housemate seemed to believe that "0", "black", "no" or "a" was the natural state of things, and thus didn't need to prove any belief structure which adopted the negative stance by default. I see that view as her belief system. In the same way I can't help but see "atheism" as "just another belief structure" that is equally proven correct as the other "faith based" belief systems.
It doesn't appear to be provably logical to believe in "atheism" anymore than some "theism". Instead, "agnosticism" seems more accurate description of what we seem to be able to "prove" (scientifically).
Is there a way of proving we don't exist in a matrix, ala Tibetan Buddhism and pop-adaptation of the movie of the same name (note prequel, "Tron"...et al
-l
They seem to be saying that the unwanted habits are the result of physical structures that have been "built" into the brain at some point.
How does this differer from other ways of altering the brain, say engaging in a "vice" or something that was considered "innocuous" at the time, but in a different situation, turns out to be "harmful"? If the unwanted behavior patterns are caused by biology, (Downs Syndrome), or by physical problems (tumors, brain lesions, strokes, blows to the head), or by exposure to some excessive shock (as in those that cause post-traumatic shock/stress syndrome), or purposeful shocks (electric shock-to-brain treatments), or 1st/2nd hand exposure to smoke/alcohol/drugs (as an adult or a fetus).
Doesn't education also physically change the structures in the same way -- and "miseducation" could also change the brain to have a child raised to have values that current society finds unpalatable (or at the very least, debatable).
This raises a question about the nature of our entire "legal" and "justice" system -- the idea about not holding people liable for crimes committed before a law was written -- what about an entire group of people who may have been "misprogrammed" by misguided or under-education or though no one caring - neglect -- should our laws be written to hold them responsible when the underlying cause of their behavior has its roots in the core of their brain and is may be very resistant to reprogramming. Drop an ancient Greek philosopher onto the American anti-pedophile landscape and explain to them that what they consider to be normal is now a criminal behavior.
In the same vein, matters criminal in one society (smoking pot, prostitution) or banned (gay marriage) may be legal in other less violent societies (Netherlands, Denmark? et al?).
How does our the US "moral" system of criminalizing violence, but allowing easy promotional access to incite or "train" in such behavior (violence on TV, Movies, computer games) to both youth and adults, compare and contrast with our laws around the perfectly legal, pleasurable, and necessary-for-life, activity of sex and access to materials (P0Rn, accessories, birth control), freedom to decide on nature of relationships (government legitimizes only the single, "[A|E]H[O][A]H"-type relationship, 1M+1W) which has made various types of sexual behavior, aside from the "1-approved-type", illegal at various times and in various ways (laws against sodomy, prostitution, adultery, "unnatural acts" (any sex not resulting in procreation), etc.)?
The laws controlling method and means to an essential, necessary - for - life - on - this - planet, legal activity of sex are almost entirely based on whims of the dominant religion-based "morals" of that society -- which change from generation to generation. Compare the standard set in the movie, "The Graduate", to the real life story turned upside down of 22yo, recent, female college grad, going to prison for what might appear to be the sexual advances of a student and her not trying to cause him problems as he was transferring out of the school. As the article mentions, the "age of consent" ranges from age 12 in Holland, to 16-18 in the US. In Wisconsin, they have a special state law applying to teachers and therapists that raise the penalties for "supposed" offenders to that of a felony instead of it being a misdemeanor. She was sentenced with the judges admonition of "'you're going to need to look deep into your soul' to change 'your character flaw.'" She was appealing.
Regardless, if it is constitutionally unethical to enact laws that apply in a matter that it would be judged harmful to an accused, how should laws be ethically applied to an entire generation of people that have been raised under one system, who later find their previous behavior "criminalized".
It is very hard for most to sympathize or understand this in what is may often be the majority mindset: that is
Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
:-)
Not that I am disagreeing with you, but I'd like to read more.
I can self-create "facts" to support your view, though that makes it no more valid, please post any peer-reviewed medical references.
Playing devil's advocate for a bit I'll argue the converse:
I found my getting sick to be more a function of how many other people I was around. If I worked from home alot (controlled temperature except for daily trips out to yoga where I'd regularly get cold, but be fairly isolated), I'd tend to stay well, but if I went in to work (another regulated atmosphere) and was around other people, or around shopping malls or crowded indoor events, I was more likely to pick up something. I had a noticable uptick in minor infections when my partner became a primary grade school teacher. Didn't get it quiet as often as she, or if I did, it was often a lower grade varient, but occasionally, a particularly virulent flu was going around and would cause some pain -- and oddly, in a few cases, even though we'd both had it once, there were one or two times we seemed to relapse off of each other.
I often feel cold -- especially in yoga classes but even in my own home, nevertheless, I rarely get sick unless I have housemates who bring things home from schoolmates/workmates. Doesn't seem to be temperature related though as even though I'll often find myself in 'cold environs' (like yoga class where, people like windows open even when in 40's outside and class room temps of upper 60's are not uncommon) -- but I am spaced fairly far apart from others. But I do get to the point of shivering/feeling chilled, one of the first stages of hypothermia. If your hypothesis was correct, I should contract bacterial infections more often, but I don't seem to -- I seem to suffer less of them by virtue of not being around virus infected people.
At this point, I'm not inclined to believe your assertion w/o further evidence and a listing of sources that I can read. It is a great hypothesis though!
Linda
Um...how about management, the rating's system, the reward system? The Choose2_Fun(features,time-to-market,quality) => [usually](features,time-to-market)? Or how about, the "we get paid for support and bug fixes but not for perfect products, non-customer reported bug-fixes are against the company's financial best interests"? (That one sucks -- as soon as "support and bug fixing became a profit center for most companies, there became an incentive to release badly documented, confusingly designed and malfunctioning programs.)
.... but then, the schedule is shot to hell, by outsiders/latecomers/marketing about this and that and the other thing " needing to be in this release" and the time being dropped out of testing and documentation? If you say "no", you get viewed as unpopular to outside groups, but respected by peer groups and subordinates who don't get pulled in for regular all-nighters and weekend work-a-thons, but conversely the opposite can happen. It only gets worse if one doesn't or can't allow those involved in such a mess time-off or a big bonus (what, a bonus? for doing their job?! You gotta be kidding!)
How about the lovely project design where one designs a schedule to fix all High & Medium bugs (at minimum) to be fixed, some features, then allows some nearly equal amount of time for documentation and testing and further bug fixing. There was a time that time in testing was thought "should" be nearly the same (maybe 3:2 ratio) as time in development) -- need to allow for time to fix bugs from testing and do full retest of products.
Hold the companies to blame, maybe, but individual programmers? The individuals are usually pawns manipulated in a much larger political organization that rewards specific behaviors and punishes others. Until the reward/punishment system is changed within the company, it's simply farcical to hold individual contributors responsible for bugs. As for "free software" or "independent" developers -- they are up against the same unethical pressures as their corporate siblings.
The reason why overseas outsourcing has become so popular is that there are no "personalities" or "people" involved. Right now, it's so cheap to outsource that it's looked at as a commodity product, and people just don't care that much about quality. So it's the ideal solution for many of today's corporations.
They can eventually export "blame" and scapegoat anonymous overseas entities who likely won't have legal recourse to fight back against slander or liable (not that many individual employees do). Unfortunately, even in America one can find one's self scapegoated for a companies illegal and/or unethical behavior and find one's self with little or no recourse.
-l
Anyone know if HD-DVD will only be usable with an online connection? That was a major downer for me when I heard that was to be an included requirement in all Blue-Ray players. So much for watching DVD's on a portable player somewhere (airplanes, in the park, in the car...wherever...).
...*yip*...not that they ever make anything that seems to appeal to my tastes, but that's not the point!). When I found about the online verification nonsense...BluRay became "Evil-blue-ray-of-death" in my mind....not that I see things in black and blue or anything. (!?non-seq!).
It's bad enough they don't let you backup the media and make the media extremely delicate/prone to damage (not to mention the "manufacturing defective DVD's, that just delaminate and die over time), but now they will tell you where you are allowed to watch it -- must be connected, somehow, somewhere, on the global internet...and Blue-Ray users will have their viewing preferences "validated" (stored and recorded) each time they play.
Do you really want someone to have a log of every movie you watch, everytime you play it?...as that seems to be the Blu-Ray solution to copy protection and detection of player tampering.
Just haven't heard how Draconian HD-DVD will be about this.
FYI, I _was_ a supporter of Blue-Ray (higher capacity = more good; the XXX industry was said to prefer the higher capacity format so they could include more "angles"
-l
To the poor brainwashed American who has been successfully victimized by Partnership for a Think-free America", who believes that marijuana is "dangerous".
First, look at the numbers: cigarettes, alcohol, and -- here's a big _fat_ problem: diet are top of the list killers in the US. Top spot is still heart disease traced to bad diet, over-eating, fat-foods and tobacco use. Cancer I think is around number #2, with over 18 deaths per hour - 24 hours a day 7 days a week -- over 400,000 people a year. Alcohol deaths have dropped due to _training_ -- has alcohol gotten less dangerous? No. There has been alot more spent on education.
Now come up with any study that shows # of accidents caused by someone being "high". Last I heard the CDC had the deaths directly attributed to marijuana as -0-. Sure, the alcohol and pharmaceutical companies among other corporate lobbies (cotton, wood based paper, etc) have a strong vested interest in trying to make you believe marijuana "kills", but the stats they use test for metabolites in someone's body that stay around up to 30 days after use -- way longer than the effect.
Second, as for actual effects on driving -- two studies that were buried found no driving degradation for moderate use in those who smoked regularly -- in fact of the two studies (one Oregon or Washington DMV), the other the CA CHP, the CHP study shows that smoking actually *improved* driving habits for _some_ drivers -- they were less rushed about getting places -- less tense, less prone to "road rage" and less prone to aggressive driving -- something now said to be an increasing cause of accidents. So get the facts before you talk about how dangerous it is and don't be fooled by the "Partnership for a Think-Free America: Just Say No to everything". I don't know about their current funding, but in their early years almost 2/3rds of their funding came from the pharma and alcohol industry. You wanna talk dangerous? Approximately 1/3rd of the pharma's patent portfolio would become virtually useless if people could grow their own at home. Heck -- it even inhibits cancer growth, which might explain why you don't see a Surgeon General's warning on marijuana smoking. To the contrary -- those who smoked cigarettes lowered their risk of lung cancer by smoking pot, they believe because the THC opens up the airways and allows the cancer particle to more quickly exit the lungs.
As for the alcohol lobby's interest in keeping marijuana illegal? It's a competitor drug. Usage patterns of alcohol showed drops in sales when large shipments were verified as coming into an area. Alcohol kills alot more people than marijuana so you might want to rethink that "dangerous" thing. Alcohol also seems to let out the asshole in people far more freely with violence not being uncommon. The opposite effect seems more common with cannabis ingestion.
There are many pharma drugs that just are not as good at treating various ailments as marijuana, or doing so without worse side effects.
Heck -- Henry Ford designed his first car to run on biodiesel & ethanol. He was growing pot on his estate and was believed to be doing so to develop a cheap, environmentally friendly fuel for his new car. Unfortunately, oil reserves were discovered first, and it was cheaper to extract the already "energy" rich "earth-battery reserves" to power Ford's invention.
A similar threat to Hearst's Publication empire came when an over abundance of hemp threatened the value of his large holdings of forest land as hemp can product about 4 times the paper/acre of tree, and can do so every year. It doesn't require lots of pesticides or fertilizers to grow -- it's a weed! Furthermore, you can skip a Very Dangerous step in making paper from hemp. Tree fibers are too stiff and long to be used in paper. They need to be broken down -- the only chemicals for the job are chlorine based products that produce toxic dioxins as byproducts. Those byproducts are costly to process as dioxin doesn't nat
Could either you or your followup friend "op12" explain what you mean by slush brown or slush anything?
Possible differences in my assumptions you are making about people's (or at least my standard config). I read slashdot for information. Being a visually oriented person, I find extraneous graphics and colors, while pleasant, often interfere with with the specific task of getting the actual information I want as quickly as I want. So I normally run in low-graphics mode and have my standard browswer return a browser ID of of some version of "lynx" (for the _rare site that recognizes text mode browswers).
Pictures on websites are only of occasional benefit because they are shot for monitors that seem to average ~19" and 1024x768 in the mainstream, which calcs out to 67 DPI, which falls below the lowest standard res for Windows settings. If they have a 17" monitor, 17" monitor, they are at least up to a low-res windows setting of 75 DPI, but unless you are someone who has a job in the computer industry or a computer enthusiast (like maybe an average slashdot reader), Dell tells me that their largest monitor sales are in the 1024x768 size. Even games have preferred that size as frame rates in the past have traditionally been lower at higher resolutions though that is slowing changing as graphics cpu's get faster -- yet still, no matter how fast the graphics get on a 1600x1200 or 1920x1200 monitor running at 24-32 bit color, it always seems that such games will run faster, and have smoother graphics running in a 1024x768 mode. I almost never see modern games runnning at 640x480 res, and 8-bit color went out in the early 90's I think. However, some less advanced modern games that focus on story lines or other tech [BIOTECH] (www.wilddivine.com) rather than action and frame rate still default to 800x600 color in 16-bit (maybe 24-32) bit color. But the end result is that web designers still design for the middle of the curve 70-75 DPI user.
Only a few years ago, on a 133DPI Dell laptop, I switched between using X' scaleable DPI settings (but a few programs used or expected fixed- sized fonts), to Windows, where I tried to use exact DPI settings (Custom), and the "standardized "Large" size (125 DPI setting), but Windows programmers were just plain dumb from the start, with 99% sizing widgets pictures and text based on pixel sizes, not querying the output device and sizing widgets, text and pictures appropriately. On Dell's newer 1920x1200 laptops, they averaged about 144 DPI. That's almost twice the clueless (or lazy) designer expected, 65-72 DPI. Thumbnails become "pinky nails", 10pt text becomes 5pt text, pictures are reduced to 50% normal size with details being visible with a magnifying glass, or being jaggedly blown-up with zoom features. Microsoft enhanced the "ease of abuse" of end users by conveniently ignoring pitiful user reqeusts to the IE browser to increase/decrease text size on many (most or all) CSS control web-sites.
While I still use IE for some purposes -- simply because it is faster to start, uses considerably less memory, and scrolls in real-time and scrolls smoothly, (vs. fire fox, which "stores" up scroll requests, and even with "smooth scrolling", scrolls so jerkily that that it is impossible to read scrolling text; and then due to stored scroll keys, goes past the point you wanted to scroll to due it's fundamental
inability to use platform native scrolling capabilities). However, I use FireFox when I want a page to display Properly and not have text plotting all over itself (or being cut off) in unreadable ways.
Only website I return the browser name of Internet Explorer, is on Microsoft Sites, as various parts of their site (as of last check) still produce corrupt HTML if the Browser-user-agent string contains "Opera", that corrupts corrupt output on IE displays. It should be illegal to actively generate corrupt/buggy output designed to cause harm to a user's computer display based on
There's already a precedent on the books for states controlling minor's access to content deemed "harmful": access to viewing of human bodies possibly engaged in legal sexual acts.
Now here is a case of a government wanting to restrict a minor's access to entertainment and training video's promoting violence and murder -- things that are not only illegal, but growing problems in our socieity.
Hello...does the word "bassackwards" mean anything? What screwy with this situation? The United States has its priorities way screwed up in this area.
It was well noted around the world some of the differences in "3rd" world areas swamped by the Tsunami last summer and area's of a "1st" world swamped by Katrina. There were numerous reports of rape, looting, even of looters shooting down rescue helicopters in New Orleans. Amerika really showed it's colors in how the opportunists responded and how slow the rescue efforts were in helping a less affluent portion of the US (but considerably more so than the Tsunami victim area).
How can we sit around having laws that rate PG rate artful movies like "Sirens" as "R" for nudity, or "Ma vien la Rose" "R" for harmful thought matter (story of a boy who thinks he's a girl) -- things that are thought provoking but by no means illegal, when at the same time, we can allow thousands of TV-Shows and movies to run with multiple murders and varying levels of graphic details of violence to run with a PG or PG-13 rating?
It's just plain insane. The same ratings should be _able_ to be applied to video games -- just as there are laws on the books applying to restricted access to "adult" book and magazine content (where adult means things you can legally do as an adult). But for things you "can't" legally do as an adult, somehow we think that it's fine for those to be unrestricted?
Step aside from your feelings of your personal "rights" being trodden on for just one second and try to look at it from a societal view. Where is the logic in the US's current attitudes towards sex and violence?
Compare and contrast to contries with similar attitudes towards sex and violence (heavily reglious societies...Iran, Iraq, etc.) vs. much of Europe. Check out the violent crime, the gun-assisted crime rate, and the rate of sexual crimes against women and children -- especially in countries like the Netherlands.
GET A CLUE!!!
*shouting against the wind*...
-l
Added cost of policing or added cost of lost sales to minors?
Makes e-commerce sites look better? Sure...try to put down cash on an ecommerce site and see how far that gets ya.
I kid may have a debit card, but there will be a paper trail when "presumably", the parents get the statement. This makes purchasing such games anonymously more difficult.
As for the upper age teens making money. That's part of the game -- the younger kids still have to pay higher prices and by standard laws of supply and demand, that tends to reduce demand. It's one thing for a teen to make purchase a keg and liquor for an occasional party, but it might start to look a bit odd if they come in and purchase multiple copies of every new *restricted* video game. Might raise some eyebrows -- might remove some of the couriers.
It's not about a comprehensive be-all end-all to the problem just like some people whine about security solutions being flawed if they are not "the magic bullet". It is about raising the cost of the obtaining the product (a successful hack) to a specific [ab]user group. You and I both know it won't stop it, but if cigarettes and alcohol were for sale to 5-year olds, you don't
think that would make 1 bit of difference in usage patterns?
That's not realistic thinking.
-l
Kennsington developed 11 button wireless trackball mice with a scroll wheel that would self-detect when it's battery ran low. Trouble is, it detects a low battery condition with annoying frequency if you use rechargeables (really doesn't like the .3 volt difference -- intelligent design that was; why not require 3 batteries if one needs the voltage to be that high, naw, that'd be too much like "right")...but when running on low voltage, they send random button presses -- mostly the extra 6 user-defined function keys at the top -- which were really cool when I first got the mice and had them to launch mail web browsers or specific apps, but once I got wise to the low voltage problem making them go off randomly/frequently, just changed all the launchables to 'noops'; the main buttons don't seem to misfire as much or don't go
bad until the battery really gets low, so that's at least usable. I also have 2 of them on my desktop at any one time, so if one just ups and dies in the middle of a move, I can complete it with the other mouse -- they are on the same frequency and just can't be used simultaneously, but I can mouse with either hand -- which ever is more convenient. It was a first step toward easing off stress on my right hand's repetitive stress.
But I still get those dang annoying popups on a semi-frequent basis telling me that a brand new low-voltage battery has been detected in my mouse. Gee, thanks for sharing...
-l
Well...Maybe I'm not the average slashdotter, but somehow I don't fancy the
idea of having random appliances, in my house, hooked up to the internet. So very much so that I have 2 VCR's I bought ~ 2 years ago that I never got to work because they had no proxy support and I've never gotten around to setting up my gnux box as a transparent proxy for the VCR's website -- no manual override to setup channels or time. Very well designed to be useless w/o a ree & open internet connection (not an unroutable local subnet that only has internet access through a gnux proxy box).
Anyway, needing open access while on my internal subnet: at odds with local security policy so still not done. DVD player on internet? Badness. Like I want to tell someone everytime I watch some movie and give them the chance to revoke a movie everytime I play it -- yeah, right.
-l
Isn't this a bit like the 1897 farcical attempt of Indiana to legislate the value of ð (Pi)?
Silly US legislature.
-l
*Duh*!
Did anyone read the temperature they exposed the damaged eyes to?
39.58C or 103.244F for 30 minutes x 6 sessions.
There are MANY more incidents of high heat exposure that people should be worried about. If my eye temperature (~94-95F at surface) was "suddenly" nearly 10F warmer, I think I might notice it as *pain*...ow!
Think about the desert heat that many people live (and fight wars) in. Temperatures there are easily over 110F -- have heard of temperatures around 120 not being uncommon.
What about people working near blast furnaces, metal or glass making, etc? How about sitting in front of a fireplace or camp fire and staring into the fire? It gets uncomfortable if the heat is hot enough -- you _notice_ it. That type of heat isn't going to happen in your eye without you being aware of it.
It's been a known fact of science that heat "cooks" protein and that the
human body doesn't function well with sustained internal temperatures
at 103 and higher. Raise it by 1.67C above that and you risk permanent brain damage as well, or raise a body "fever to 2C above their test temperature --
it's frequently fatal.
This isn't rocket science or news.
-l
I have always worked around this in IE by pressing control-N to re-open the window in a normal browser window that shows me the address.
I'm not sure if there is another workaround for the Firefox related browsers, but a control-N only opens a blank window -- I can do that by reclicking on the IE-icon, or typing a web-addr into the "Address-bar" on Windows. It'd be much more useful if it opened a new window with duplicate context. I'm
always using that feature when using Google. I have Google set to open results in a 2nd window. Often, I want to keep one or more result windows open -- and Google re-uses the original 2nd window it popped open. Pressing control-N, gives a dup of the result, freeing the "2nd window for re-use by Google. Another use -- sometimes a site opens a 2nd window of a fixed size. Unfortunately site designers haven't gotten the concept of "DPI". Even though the text is enlarged because the OS recognizes the DPI setting, the sites don't resize windows, widgets, frames, etc. Thus text gets cut off or is unreadable. Easy workaround -- just re-open the window and resize it.
Firefox and related don't seem to have this ability. I consider it a security risk as well as it being usability unfriendly to those using higher DPI screens. Is there a workaround for Firefox and related browsers?
If there isn't a workaround for Firefox/Moz/Safari/Netscape, I'd say that
was a valid security complaint. It's even worse that this security risk
is "old news". So much for fast security fixes w/open source.
-l
My VHS player is about 15 years old, it still works fine. Two different DVD players (one 6 and one 5 years old have problems playing most disks. My parents bought a new DVD player last summer, but after failing to be able to watch 3 rentals, they've gone back to VHS tapes.
Nothing gets a rise out of my BP than trying to play DVD's. Some just won't play at all on either of 2 players -- it seems I can get them to work on a brand new DVD drive (2 older ones at about 3-4 years old failed). Too much dust in air, too much heat -- my VHS player isn't so picky. While I can get 5.1 sound out of the digital out my computer with the external USB DVD, due to the grand and glorious DVD-play & backup prevention technology, images on the computer's Video out don't display the DVD image! I see the DVD player frame and my desktop on the TV, but no image in the frame (while it is shown on the small screen of my computer -- it doesn't do much for a shared watching experience. It seems the Plextor-included SW player isn't seem compatible with the Dell video output.
These problems just don't happen w/the VCR. I had a newer S-VHS player from Sony, but it just stopped playing. Fortunately, the older tech VCR just keeps on working. Same w/my parent's VCR -- though their house is hardly dusty nor should it be too hot, but what is "too hot"? People are used to placing their players on top of their TV-sets, but that can certainly reach 80-90 degrees, which seems to be too hot.
I can see how my DVD's might be dusty...I have four dogs and a cat. I use a fireplace for heating in winter, and forced air (air intake from fireplace/living room in winter, into central air circulator, and gas forced air heating in spring/fall when it's too warm for fires). Still forced air blows around air, even with a 3M-Ultra-allergen filtrete, it's still above safe levels for a DVD player apparently.
However, my parents couldn't play DVD's reliably on a brand new player. They are in their 70-80's, and wouldn't be comfortable going through the gyrations I go through to get things to play. On a DVD, a blemish makes my Sony player jump chapters -- sometimes more than one, forward or back. On a VHS tape, it just affects a few seconds. Even CD's are more reliable in that way -- maybe a skipped track, but not 10-20 minutes of the movie just skipped.
It's *Great* video and audio quality (have 5.1 and DTS decoding and speaker setup) _when_ it works, but I dread renting and buying DVD's that I don't know will play when I get them home...
VHS's are disappointing in video quality...BUT...they do, just work...
-l
Unless they are already planning on many more Gb of on-chip cache, data-starvation will become an even bigger issue than it is today.
It might be less of a problem for multiple-threads that are executing in the same program, but they are still likely to be operating on different data streams.
In the case of multiple cores running different programs it will get much worse, unless average program sizes shrink to a 1-2Mb of Resident/Working-Set size. Right now, looking at 2 Desktop systems:
This would seem to indicate a need for 4-16Mb of L2 cache needed to keep all these processes from forcing L2-cache misses at 100's to 1000's of context switches/second. These are desktop systems that are not doing much other than email and web browsing. I cannot see it being better with high-load server systems. How many of the new multi-core systems are going to have L2 cache > 8Mb/core? 4Mb/core (for fast cache/low-latency memory)? How many systems will fast enough main memory feed 8-32 processes.
I've read that CPU starvation is already a problem in the faster Intel family processors, will the "system" hardware infrastructure be there to enable multiple cores to be fed?
They may be lowering the GHz/cpu, but as the Sun article points out, with 8 cores, that's still 8-cores times "N"GHz to be kept fed with data.
It's going to be a strained design scenario if you need to constrain those 8 cores to a using an average of 1Gb/core of cache memory.
Does anyone know if the new "breed" of multi-core CPU's have a shared cache or if they are going to be limited to separate caches/core? Could cache memory contention become an issue?
BTW -- does anyone know if disk manufacturers are planning (or are switching to common use) of multiple heads/platter? I could see arrays of 2-4 heads to cut seek latency by 50-75% and disks with heads 90 or 180 degrees out of phase to reduce rotational latency -- perhaps allowing lower RPM disks to consume less power and run with lower noise/cooling requirements. Maybe this is already being done in higher end SCSI disks?
**-why doesn't "ecode" support spacing? How does one do tables? What are "too many "lame" characters (when I had better table w/more spacing)? Grumble -- took 3x as long to format as write! >;-((
Why don't you talk it over with your fiance and find a set of matching rings that you both can afford -- then spend excess cash on a honey-moon or house downpayment.
:-)
Do you want an equal partnership or are you looking to 'buy' a wife? Might I suggest that 'buy'ing such a wife sets a poor precedent for the future of the relationship.
If one of you doesn't make as much as the other, fine: figure out a proportional payment based on your take-home and find a pair based on that sum.
Wasting so much money on a rock in this day and age when marriages are often not "forever" seems a bit dated -- and being a woman, I certainly wouldn't want the feeling of indebtedness that might come from such an unequal exchange. It would feel like a wrong power & relationship dynamic.
You also might find she likes other gemstones better than the "vanilla" standard white diamond.
I don't think artificial diamonds of superb color/clarity are quite yet ready for "prime time". Have read they have made small ones, but they are quite a bit away from larger ones and mass production.
Might also think of whether or not you want the bride's father to pay for the wedding (another tradition, taking the place of the dowry), or maybe pool resources w/your parents toward a honeymoon (or house downpayment).
At least with the money for a house downpayment -- you will both own a house together. Studies have shown a positive correlation between, both joint ownership of property and joint finances and longer marriages.
All this presumes you are a "mere", mortal man. If you are Bill Gates or
some multi-billionaire, well... nevermind.